Here they come, walkin' down the street. Hey, hey they're the polymaths, and their extraordinary cerebellums and groundbreaking discoveries are at the heart of Genius of Britain (C4). Presented by a relay team of celebrity brainiacs, the first of five nightly episodes on Britain's biggest ever brains focused on the early members of the Royal Society.

David Attenbrilliant dealt with the 17th century theories and passions of Christopher Wren, Richard Dawkins did the same with pioneering microbiologist Robert Hooke. There was James "Hoover" Dyson on Robert Boyle, theoretical physicist Jim Al-Khalili on Isaac Newton, and physicist Kathy Sykes on comet-naming prodigy Edmond Halley.

There was a pleasantly gossipy tinge to proceedings. We learned that Newton was aloof and temperamental. Hooke had a "meagre aspect", a "large forehead" and was "probably a hunchback". Boyle once blew up a pig's bladder while experimenting with an air pump. Wren was quite interested in bees. Envy, ambition and opportunism bubbled volcanically under the Royal Society's bewigged carapace. Hooke considered Newton a braggart and believed him to have nabbed all his best ideas. Newton – "the greatest genius of them all", according to narrator Stephen Hawking - disliked Hooke so intensely he (allegedly) had all portraits of his learned colleague destroyed. Forsooth!

Still, Genius of Britain resisted the temptation to analyse the power games. It also proved admirably oblivious to the lure of other prevailing televisual fads. There were no dramatic reconstructions. There were no attempts to sauce things up by drafting in a member of the ubiquitous "hot boffin" brigade (Brian Cox, the one with the eyebrows from How To Grow Your Own Drugs, etc). The soundtrack complemented the action rather than wrestling it to the ground and shoving a brass section in its face. We were not asked to vote for our favourite scientist at the end of the programme; nor were we asked which one we wanted to see win a place in the final by taking part in a studio boffin-off in which they did sums at each other until one of them dropped his equinoctial dial.

Instead, this was a serious attempt to do scientific history justice, an intelligent but accessible account of the lives of men and women who had shaped the course of history, presented by men and women who had spent their lives studying them. Or at least more than 10 minutes Googling them on their Blackberry in the cab on the way to the studio. More power to its leather elbow patch.

I've been wondering about the exclamation mark affixed to the title of I'm in a Rock'n'Roll Band! (BBC2). Is it an ironic, pop-art thing? Is it a genuine, artless display of enthusiasm – a sort of punctuative air-punch? Or is it a well-meaning if palpably desperate attempt to pump enthusiasm into something that's obviously a bit duff, like a mother doing manic helicopter arms and comedy engine noises in the hope baby won't notice he's being fed pureed turnip? The sheer volume of pureed turnip in the penultimate episode brought the gavel down on the latter theory.

The series' studded, marblewash-denim gilet is growing increasingly frayed. The OMG quotient – surely a vital component of a series that re-examines a subject that has been re-examined to the point of near-extinction – has flatlined. All that's left is Gene Simmons drawling about how Kiss weren't a band, they were a brand for the 489,758th time, and a clip of Emerson, Lake and Palmer getting off a plane.

After episodes focusing on the respective role of the singer, drummer, guitarist and bassist, this instalment concerned the band as a whole, and an insight, it promised, into what it is like to "look out from the inside". Sting told us through a hedgerow (or was it a beard?) that being in a band is "like marriage without the sex". Bob Geldof said something about money. Was being in a rock group all it was cracked up to be? All: "Yes." Was it also quite hard work and tiring and often really boring and liable to make you fall out with your bandmates? All: "Yes." Ho-hum. Next week: the results of an online poll to decide the "ultimate rock'n'roll band"!